Printed Circuit Board Testing and Custom Testing Solutions

The printed circuit board (PCB) is the brain behind every single electronic product that we use today as consumers, and that is used by commercial and industrial businesses. Printed circuit board testing is critical to the success of any assembly, sub-assembly, or finished product to ensure that it turns on, lights up, plugs in, and does what it was designed to do. While there are standard commercial PCBs available on the market, for the most part, our clients focus on custom functional test solutions for unique PCBs that they use in the development and manufacture of industrial products, machinery, and equipment. Custom testing solutions are essential to make sure that all of the electrical components included in the PCB perform as intended.

Printed Circuit Board Fabrication Variances

EMC Technologies offers contract manufacturing for PCB design, fabrication, assembly, and testing. The designs that we create for our clients can accommodate a wide range of requirements, including a simple double-sided PCB or extremely complicated multi-layer designs. Our designs can be accomplished directly from the client’s requirements and specifications or developed entirely by our engineers in-house. Our printed circuit board designs are available either in PADS or Allegro format. We utilize the design and manufacture of PCBs as an integral component of interface test adapters for various reasons. Greater signal integrity and repeatability is just one of the advantages, reducing debugging time and allowing us to create faster, less expensive exact duplicates of the interface test adapters for our clients.

Other advantages of these custom PCB design solutions is that they allow us to establish a better organization of relays, power, and ground busses, as well as signal conditioning components as part of the connector saver adapter card for easier maintenance and high-volume testing. We offer full in-house machining and metal fabricating services at our facility. Our machine shop includes all of the latest state-of-the-art equipment, including CNC milling centers, knee-mills, lathes, drilling equipment, and sheet metal brakes. Having all of these tools at our disposal and the skilled technicians required to operate them, allows EMC Technologies to fabricate nearly any machined part from simple aluminum pieces to more complicated tight-tolerance parts. This helps us to create custom testing solutions for interface test adapters and printed circuit board testing that other manufacturers might not be able to achieve.

PCB Fabrication Specifications

When designing a custom printed circuit board or creating custom printed circuit board testing solutions, it is essential to consider the fabrication specifications of the PCB itself. For example, the dimensions of the PCB can vary widely, requiring very small or extremely large PCBs, depending on the application. Also, irregularly shaped PCBs might be required for custom solutions in product development. The number of layers must also be considered as well. With printed circuit board testing, the number of layers in the actual PCB is an indicator of its complexity. The type of material used, the thickness of the board, the plating finish, and requirements for minimum width and spacing will all play a role as well.

Impedance control, which may be required with PCBs that have a radio on it for Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, is also essential. When impedance control is used, it means that a set of specified traces, such as the radiofrequency (RF) net, presents a known resistance to the signals that travel within them. Certain factors can impact impedance, such as the solder mask, trace width, and material. Controlling the impedance is essential to optimize the performance of the wireless antenna. While this can add to fabrication costs, it is necessary to ensure proper execution of printed circuit board testing and achieve the requirements of the industry or manufacturer. EMC Technologies has a full Engineering and Design team that can address your project as a complete system for the best results.

Printed Circuit Board Testing

When you work with our team to create your custom testing solutions, we can provide highly custom interface test adapters and printed circuit boards to meet the demands of your project. We work with a wide range of industries and are especially proficient in the areas of high speed, tight tolerance, temperature, test racks, and radiofrequency RF test fixtures. To learn more about the services that we provide or to speak with one of our team members about your needs for custom functional test solutions, give us a call at 508-672-0808.